Up in the Air
by Meelu the Bold
Summary: Just a snippet of a day in the life of Vanessa, postStone Wars. It's a tough life!


**Disclaimer + Note: I don't own Fire Emblem (8): The Sacred Stones. It is property of Nintendo and Intelligent Systems. Man, Vanessa! My love! Enjoy a simple story about a hardworking woman. At least I'm writing stuff now, right?**

Up in the air, words got lost to the wind. The knights in a formation would communicate via a series of hand and arm signals, sometimes augmented by colored packets of smoke powder when the fliers were dappled the sky miles apart from one another. The packets were outfaced with a gritty colored piece of sandpaper and the end of each rider's thumb was tipped with a sharp thimble to ignite the packet. Vanessa held a violet one in her hand and she wasn't sure if she was going to have to use it or not.

She wasn't afraid of falling. She was never afraid, even though knights reliably go splat and die at a paltry thirty feet. There was something about the height that comforted her; the higher she was, the less likely she was to be ambushed and arrows reached the end of their arc at some point in time. Besides, she was strapped to the saddle at the waist. The Everlasting would have to pluck Titania out of the sky, turn her upside down and really _shake_ to detach the strap that kept her from falling despite her pegasus's outrageous maneuvers.

What Vanessa was afraid of was gargoyles. The southern countries had their earthquake and cataclysm to think of—the northern countries had fleets of monsters. Valni was proving to be less sacred than originally believed, as it was like a fount for the beasts. Violet had formerly been used for wild wyverns approaching and had been rare to see.

Now, Vanessa used it at least twice or thrice a week.

There! Between two mountain crags was a dark and mossy star shaped nest. They hadn't yet spotted her. It was high noon, when they were mostly sleeping. Vanessa snapped her thumb against the grit twice and the packet exploded with a pop that she couldn't hear through her helmet and the wind. She sailed onward, past the dusty dark purple cloud trailing behind her. The cool gray wind sifted through it and blew it up into a billowing, weightless mass.

Vanessa checked her rear. Petra, a mile east, signaled back with a response the color of a ripe red apple. There were six more bursts of dark red. Vanessa wheeled back to maintain her position. There should have been nine red clouds total; but Lena had been grounded by a bonewalker's arrow and was lucky even to be alive. The loss of her pegasus, Thanisis, would be the more difficult injury to surmount. Lena would never be the same. A horse could be easily replaced and often was. A pegasus was the only one for its rider. There was no replacing a pegasus. Miranna was flying her back.

Her knights flew in within a third of an hour and Vanessa's right arm worked furiously to communicate her battle plan as succinctly and clearly. They would bomb the gargoyles with fire first, to achieve the most massive preemptive strike. It looked to be a on the small side, only thirty to fifty occupants and most of them would be infants or adolescents, too young to fly well or handle a spear effectively.

Perhaps half the nest or more would be decimated. Vanessa knew that only the quickest, toughest would survive and that it would be a grueling fight out for her and her girls, the Lighthoofs. They would just have to slay whatever came at them. When the nest was eradicated, they'd complete their flight and then go to Anastasius to rest and trade off with the Silverfeathers. Her knights knew what was expected. Vanessa gave the signal. They wheeled around into double-sided prong for maximum coverage, and flew low.

Attached to the saddle in a special pouch were the powder-bombs, along with Vanessa's throwing javelin and her silver tipped lance. It wasn't silver like Vanessa would wear around her neck. The 'silver' used by blacksmiths was also known by the name of warsilver and now by the moniker 'monstersilver' because of its curiously destructive effect on monster flesh. Vanessa could dislodge the bombs with a hard kick if necessary, but she was reasonably hesitant to do that because of their sensitivity. It was far safer to simply reach down and tug them out. It was heavier, more potent version of the communication packets.

To ignite the wick, she had to snap her thimble across the sandpaper and then let it fall as soon as possible. The blast might not dismount her, but it would knock Titania out of the air and render her burned beyond recognition, and dead.

Vanessa dropped the first bomb, and it was succeeded by six others; Ninea had used hers already on the bonewalker tribe earlier. They flew about twice the speed as was normal, to outstrip the blast.

In the three minutes it took for the bombs to explode, they overshot the overlooking crag and then picked up altitude to gain an advantage of height. Vanessa drew her lance from across her lap. After the boom of the explosion, Vanessa could hear through her earwax filled ears the deadly sharp shrieks of roused gargoyles. The adults that survived shot up like rockets, their spears in hand. They were either stolen from dead soldiers or crudely formed from stone. There were only about ten or twelve survivors. A good number.

Vanessa and her knights dispersed randomly, pairing off or going solo. Vanessa picked out a fearsome male with a heavy-looking lance. She gained its attention by swooping above it and then shooting upward. Titania twisted in the air, unaffected by the curious sensation of galloping parallel to the ground. It was just one way that pegasi were a class apart from a horse; down and up were formalities. Vanessa was used to fighting this way, and she found that it disoriented gargoyles to no end, since they invariably stayed oriented with feet pointed downward.

The male growled, presumably, and brandished its spear proudly. As far as she could tell, the nicer the spear, the higher up the gargoyle in the nest hierarchy. Gargoyles were slightly smarter than some other monsters, but their half formed brains weren't amenable to negotiations. 

The gargoyle made a jab at her fruitlessly. She circled out of his reach, just past where he thought she out to be. She spiraled below him and spiked—he jerked in surprise, but her mark was dead-on and she gored him hard just above the groin and into the softest scales about his belly. She pulled hard to dislodge the point as she sailed past him—a pegasus was always moving in its combination of air-gallop and glide—and the gargoyle tumbled out of the sky and down into its burning nest. Vanessa wasted a second to watch him for a recovery.

Vanessa wrenched hard by a blow to her side. A female gargoyle, she saw with dumb surprise, had swooped her. Probably the mate of the male she'd just killed. Her spear caught Vanessa's spaulder instead, the plate guarding her shoulder, which took most of the strike for her in exchange for a nasty scar. The point of the spear glanced downward—glanced seemed too meager a word to Vanessa—and had slashed at the flesh below, between the end of the spaulder and her elbow of her spear arm. The silver tipped spear dropped uselessly into midair.

Vanessa looked down—too much blood to see anything, but it hurt. It hurt. The blood was flowing down her leg and Titania's flank and into the air below her. She gritted her teeth and acted, ripping off an elixir from her belt and tearing out the cork viciously. She knocked it back in one gulp and instantly felt light-headed, or 'clouded' as the girls called it. She didn't like fighting this way, but it was better than being dead in the air. She tossed the empty bottle and then armed herself with the javelin in her off hand. It took her only a half a moment.

The female was barreling at her again, screeching a cry of revenge. Hoping that her aim was true even with the wrong hand, Vanessa pitched her javelin. It missed the main body, wavering to the right, but tore a devastating hole in the female's leathery wing. Vanessa whooped in triumph as the monster lost altitude and plummeted fatally to the ground.

The battle wasn't yet over, though, and she had lost both of her spears. She drew her sword. She wasn't particularly proficient, but it was a fine sword and it would allow for some protection. Vanessa was no longer on the offense. Her injury was severe enough, she reckoned, to preclude her from that, so she would assist and defend.

From what she could tell, there were only three survivors yet, and they would soon be picked off. Edna was injured, too, and bleeding from a gash on her leg. For the most part, the Lighthoofs were simply mopping up an inferior enemy. Vanessa's arm was mending rapidly, now, but she was still flying clouded. She blinked and shook her head fiercely to clear her eyes of fog. She flew in—strange to orient herself the opposite way—to score at a gargoyle's exposed back, specifically at the wings and assist Esther, a promising young greenwing.

Vanessa overshot after hitting her mark a little too much. Damn! She hated elixirs, but oh, how she loved being alive. She couldn't quite pull back on Titania and guide her back, now, but her partner seemed to know that she ought to and arced back to the fray. Vanessa checked left and only had a half second to dodge.

One of the gargoyles had made a last ditch effort to take one of the knights down with him and thrown his lance at her. Vanessa moved, flinched, and swiped at it with her sword when it was clear that Titania would never be able to maneuver away. The gargoyle barreled toward her, right behind its deflected weapon. It collided with her and straddled her, wrapping its legs around her torso, clawing and biting. The smell was awful—Vanessa punched, hard, and slashed in the same movement. She gritted her teeth and headbutted his chest. He grunted from the blows, but held fast. Vanessa wedged her arm so that her sword could pierce his underbelly and forced it through.

The black blood spurted into her face. The shock was enough to slacken his grip enough for Vanessa to push him off. He clawed at her neck and face, and blood flowed from the cuts—grasping as his blows had been, they were only shallow wounds and her helm had help deflect some of them. The parts where he had gotten at her close up were worse. She felt chewed on. Vanessa looked down and grimaced. He had urinated on her, too.

Not one of her better battles.


End file.
